A: Arachnophobia

AWWWW, HELL NAW

Nothing makes me curl up into the fetal position faster than spiders. No matter the size, shape or skill set, I despise them all. And don’t tell me they play an important part in the animal kingdom/food chain. Later for all that! When one is rappelling down from the ceiling on a shaky web or scuttling across my kitchen floor or crawling across my linens or crafting a death trap across my front door, I consider the gauntlet thrown. It’s me against them and only one of us is coming out alive.

I can vanquish any other kind of insect without the slightest remorse but spiders are the Sum of All Fears. They move too quickly. They’re silent. They have too many legs and eyes. They’re hairy.

They do this.

Occasionally, by the time I’ve screwed my courage to the sticking post they’re gone! And the only thing worse than seeing a spider in my house? LETTING THAT SPIDER LIVE. Such transgressions cannot be allowed. I can’t sleep knowing that beast has free reign.

I suck it up, say a prayer and do my duty. The house is usually a mess, the neighbors are calling 911 because I’m screaming bloody murder and I’m hyperventilating, but victory is always mine.

56 thoughts on “A: Arachnophobia”

Adrianne I hear you and feel your pain! I hate spiders too! I enjoyed reading this post! Where in the world did you get that spooky video with the spider popping up? Looks like something from a horror movie!

I am a total arachnophobe. My mother used to read from a book of nursery rhymes and whenever she got to “Little Miss Muffet,” I’d scream and beg her to turn the page. When I moved to Colorado, my husband caught a wolf spider in our garage and showed it to me. I took one look at it and said, “If anything looking remotely like that enters our house, I’m leaving.” Needless to say, I hired an exterminator for monthly spraying.

I managed to get over my fear of spiders somehow (I’m guessing it was never really that bad) but ticks, now…ticks and leeches…somebody MENTIONED having a tick on them and I had horrible tick dreams two nights running. It’s not even the bloodsucking aspect that gives me the heebie jeebies as much as it is the fact that you don’t feel ticks or leeches bite you – you’re just like lah di dah OH GOD IT’S STUCK TO ME.

There’s no way I can see to get over this fear that doesn’t involve something out of a horror movie, so I will simply have to live somewhere where neither vile creature is a problem.

It’s also the nastiness of a parasitic creature that gets me, come to think of it – spiders, at least, serve important roles in their ecosystems. But ticks, leeches, and mosquitoes – just there to cheerfully do hideous things to you! (My boyfriend claims that if you let a mosquito bite you without swatting it, it won’t itch. Watching him sit there with a mosquito visibly swelling on his hand is the stuff of nightmares. At least you can swat mosquitoes – ticks you have to remove exactly right, and CRUSH, and take care not to let the head get embedded in you – and leeches just SQUIRM. Gahhh…I need to go look at some pictures of kittens now.)

Blegh! I used to have to burn ticks off our dogs when I was little. Such nasty, nasty things. Mosquitoes get huge around here, there’s NO WAY I could sit still and let that happen to me. Thankfully I have never encountered a leech in person but I used to work in a hospital and one time I was in the pharmacy and they were actually preparing leeches and maggots to be used for a patient’s wound care. I almost quit that day.

You are hi-larious! I love it! My husband has his hands full with me and my two girlies and our screams at the sight of the little monsters. I was bitten by one a few months ago and had a horrible hole in my leg for a bit.

Oh man! That gif is going to give me nightmares. I just couldn’t stop watching it… It got worse every consecutive time.

I used to make my little sister (I know, I’m such a great example) or my Dad remove the spiders from my room, but now I have cats. All I have to do is knock the spider off the wall/ceiling and then I can sic my cats on it! They’ll eat it too, which is kind of gross and kind of satisfying. Die, spider!

Oh gosh. I wrote about this for A, too. I’m actually too terrified of spiders to even look at pictures of them, though. I scrolled past those parts really fast. *eep!* Seems like you fare better than I do.

This is my worst phobia. I have rules about spiders. If they are in my house they will not live.

I think I got another spider bite today, getting a stored rug from my garage. I saw it and killed it, but later found a bite on my hand. I’m pretty sure it’s not the brown recluse. I’ve already had one bite. Yikes.
Great writing – Subject? Um–ok. :))))

My mom and I both hate spiders but I am usually the one who has to get rid of them. My mom once woke me up at 5 am to do away with a ferocious looking spider (the size of a quarter) that decided to take up residence in the bathroom. I don’t like killing spiders with shoes or tissue boxes, especially the big ones, because they tend to lean juicy marks where their bodies once were (yuck!). I capture them in jars and set it outside to die.

I’m still waiting for that giant spider in your first picture to show up and seek revenge. xD

Hahaha. I loved this one. My writing friend Gorgon Grice loves spiders and has written books about them and I have an essay all about wasps and spiders. It’s all very creepy. Happy A to Z to you. You’re off to a great start!

My husband detests spiders, too. I am one of the few who actually like them. Instead of killing the ones I find in the house, I scoop them up and put them back outside. My husband says they’ll just come back in again. But I like the little critters. Now cockroaches–that’s another thing.

1. I could not look at the images in this post. When I was a kid, my sister chased me around the house with an enlarged picture of a spider. I DO NOT DO SPIDERS LOL
2. To answer your question, yesterday I was on a roll conquering my fear (well, my shyness to be more accurate): (1) I spoke with a panelist and some other attendees at a conference and (2) I asked a question during a post-film q&a.